U.S. Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault (Efron) returns from his third tour of duty in Iraq, with the one thing he credits with keeping him alive—a photograph he found of a woman he doesn't even know. Discovering her name is Beth (Schilling) and where she lives, he shows up at her door, and ends up taking a job at her family-run local kennel. Despite her initial mistrust and the complications in her life, a romance develops between them, giving Logan hope that Beth could be much more than his good luck charm.

After enjoying four weeks at number one The Hunger Games finally ended its box office reign. While it still earned over $14 million, down just 30% from last week, and crossed the $350 million mark in total US sales, it was finally forced to give way to new, fresher competition.

Though The Hunger Games will finally be giving up its reign over the box office, it's still a strong weekend at the North American box office, with not one but two movies finally capable of unseating Katniss and company. The earliest numbers from Friday suggest that Think Like A Man

This week on Operation Kino we're cuing up the soft focus and the Tim Allen narration as we review both the Zac Efron weepie The Lucky One and the new nature documentary Chimpanzee. From there we launch into a conversation inspired by another of the week's new releases, Think Like A Man

It’s not exactly hard to figure out why women enjoy reading and/or watching Nicholas Sparks stories. The man’s books freely tap into women’s most romantic fantasies where the man walks thousands of miles to be with his love and all passionate kisses must be done outside in the pouring rain. But is the wish fulfillment aspect of Nicholas Sparks’ stories something that filmmakers recognize and implement while crafting their adaptations?

No time for messing around. I’ve got a tee time later this afternoon and a bunch of movies to cover before then. Ah hell, golf can wait, especially when we’ve got Zac Efron coming home from war, dudes having relationship trouble and chimpanzees looking cute as hell

If ever there’s a movie that’s aiming to send hearts aflutter, it’s the upcoming film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ 2008 novel The Lucky One. The trailer for the film is as heavy on romance and heartache as the movie itself is likely to be.

Even though The Notebook hit theaters in 2004 and made a killing at the box office (to the tune of $81 million domestically on a $29 million budget), it took four years before the next Nicholas Sparks adaptation came around. Since 2008, however, they've been coming fairly regularly, with Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and The Last Song all making their way into theaters over the past three years.

Zac Efron, the fresh-faced youngun who seemed ubiquitous during his High School Musical days, has been hard to spot in the last year-- since his soggy drama Charlie St. Cloud made almost no impact at the box office last summer, Efron hasn't appeared on screen at all